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Aerial acrobats seriously injured in fall after platform collapses during US circus performance

Updated
Mon 5 May 2014, 10:05 AM AEST

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Emergency personnel treated the performers who were injured when the scaffolding they were hanging from collapsed.

Reuters: Aletha Wood

Nine acrobats were seriously injured when a platform collapsed during an aerial hair-hanging act during a circus performance filmed by spectators in Rhode Island, in the United States.

Eight of the female acrobats, performing during a Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus show in Providence, Rhode Island, were meant to hang by their hair in chandelier-like fashion.

The circus's parent company Feld Entertainment said the accident was under investigation.

"There was an accident during the hair hang act. All performers in the act received immediate medical attention and were transported to a local hospital for further care," Feld Entertainment said in a statement.

It said the show was stopped after the accident and the two other performances scheduled for the day had been cancelled.

Shortly after the platform's curtain dropped, the metal apparatus collapsed, and the women fell 8 to 12 metres, landing on another performer on the ground, the Providence Journal cited police as saying.

They were rushed to hospital, where they were in a critical condition but with non-life threatening injuries.

A video posted on YouTube by an apparent spectator showed the structure crashing to the ground shortly after it nearly completed its ascension toward the ceiling of the Dunkin' Donuts Centre.

The circus's website describes the Medeiros Troupe as "hairialists" from the US, Brazil, Bulgaria and Ukraine who "perform a combination of choreography and cut-ups including spinning, hanging from hoops, and rolling down wrapped silks, all while being suspended 35 feet in the air by their hair alone".

"In this hair-raising act, audiences will even see the weight of three girls held aloft by the locks of only one of these tangled beauties," the website added.

Feld Entertainment spokesman Stephen Payne told CNN that "something went very wrong," noting that the apparatus had been used 12 to 14 times a week for months.

"So we're very concerned about what type of equipment failure took place," he added.